You are saying that Soriano is our 3rd most valuable OFer. If a player(600 PA's) has neutral value at everything, hitting, running, defense, position, he'll be a 2 win player. Soriano wasn't a 2 win player. Soriano plays LF -7.5. He is about neutral at defense, he is worth maybe 1 run with the legs, and about 1 run with the bat. So let's say that next year he gets 600 PA's. He's at 12.5 runs with position factored in. Let's say he gets that run with his legs. 13.5 Maybe worth 2 runs with his legs. 15.5 then let's say that he goes up to 5 runs with the bat. He's basically back at 2 WAR. That's the optimistic side. You're trying to tell me that Tony Campana and Reed Johnson over the course of a full season couldn't manage to be worth 7.5 runs with their legs, bat, and defense? I call shenanigans. Hell, Darwin Barney managed to be worth 2.2 WAR this year. That's with having a bat that was worse than Koyie Hill's. RJ and Campana both would have pretty good defensive ratings in LF, neither are a liability with their legs, and while both would probably have below average bats, I don't think for a second that they couldn't manage a 2 WAR, especially if Barney can do it.
LOL...i pointed out earlier that this is an example of why WAR has issues...the whole metric can get skewed by position among other things
again darwin barney above ryan howard and nelson cruz? why?
perhaps we should refer to a good point that was made in the article FT posted
Is WAR the new RBI? | It's About The Money
"A few sluggers are swift, slender middle-infielders. Most of them aren’t. To paraphrase Reggie, there are lots of drinks and precious few straws. If you get left without one, no amount of Range Factor, WHIP, or baserunning acumen can save your season. Just ask the Padres, or the Mariners."
i agree...i believe that WAR and other metrics do a good job or incorporating baserunning,leg values, and alot of other things to help try to give a more in depth perspective on a player's value..but they overdo it in that regard...and this hurts sluggers like fielder and hmmm...SORIANO...at the end of the day i think there's a medium between a superficial view of a player's value(meaning judging on principle stats..saying a player is great because he has a high RBI count or something like that) and the metrics view....
baserunning,leg values, all of the other stuff is important...thats almost a given...but in comparison to slugging....they have should have less overall weight...why in the world do you think the cubs and so many other teams wanted fielder? because he's a great baserunner or a 5 tools guy? no...slugging
soriano was 50th in slugging pct...in one of his worst seasons....additionally a reason for his lower slugging pct is that he was an inconsistent base hitter
also, as i pointed out earlier by the way you extrapolated to give a seemingly more accurate judgement of campana's value...these metrics are open to subjectivity and fluctuate... there isn't one single standard here...look at barney's baseball reference WAR vs. his fangraphs WAR for an extreme example...on baseball reference campana and soriano had exactly the same WAR
you could pretty much pick some correlative number and call say its someone's WAR using subjective extrapolations
oh, and btw on fangraphs campana is projected to have a 1.1 WAR in 2012,reed johnson 0.4,
and soriano 1.5
